Bye, Bye, Bottle

When we had Wyatt's 1 year check-up our doctor encouraged us to get rid of the bottle, particularly the before-bed bottle.  I know this is a battle that a lot of people go through, so I wanted to share our experience.   Luckily, for us, the before-bed bottle was the only bottle Wyatt was receiving during the day. My first thought was, how?? How do we get him to go to sleep without ripping his heart out??  Her suggestion was to offer warm water instead of milk.  So, okay, that's what I tried. HA! Yea, he wasn't having any of that mess. He screamed and cried until I gave in. So, I did some more research. I found several people that were slowly substituting water for the milk, in an effort to water it down...and make it disgusting.   I didn't really have a timeline or plan for how much water to substitute. I just kind of started. When I first started the bottles he was drinking about 7oz. So I started with about 5oz of milk and 2oz of water.  We did that for a while, until he would drink the bottle without fighting it. I then went to half/half, and we did that until he wasn't fighting it.  Now, I will warn you, the more water that we added the more he peed at night...so we had a lot of leaky diapers.   Eventually Wyatt got to where he wasn't drinking all of the bottle. I started making smaller bottles, about 5oz.  I think it usually contained about 3oz of water and 2oz of milk.  Slowly, but surely, I got to where I was only making about a 3oz bottle of water, with a little milk for color....and he finally realized it wasn't even worth his time.   I'm happy to say that this week, after about 3 months, Wyatt has gone to bed 4 nights in a row without a bottle! This has been a huge transition for us me! We used to cuddle and rock in his room every night while he drank his bottle. Now, he wants nothing to do with that mess. He takes his bath, has some playtime/TV time, and then when he's ready (about 8:30) he lets us know that he's ready to go "night-night with lion".   It's such ironic timing, and you'd think by now I'd understand, how everything happens when it's supposed to.  One of the things I kept stressing over was whether or not to move Wyatt's rocker into the nursery or wait, and I guess now I know. Since he and I don't really use it anymore, it's ready for Sissy and I to use.